Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday told The New York
Times that he thought the "blue slip" practice should be
scrapped for circuit court nominations, a move that would
eliminate Democrats' only leverage against President Donald
Trump's picks to the nation's second-highest courts.

"My personal view is that the blue slip, with regard to circuit
court appointments, ought to simply be a notification of how
you're going to vote, not the opportunity to blackball,"
McConnell told The Times, adding that he still favored keeping
the practice in place in its current form for district court
judges.

Responding to McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer
told The Times that "getting rid of the blue slip would be a
mistake."

"Preserving some of the minority's power in the Senate has broad
support because every one of us knows we're probably going to be
in some of each," he said.

The blue slip is a Senate tradition in which senators can give or
withhold their blessing for a judicial nominee from their state.
The process is intended to
provide a more bipartisan consensus on judges who will serve
in or represent a senator's home state when the president is of
the opposition party, encouraging communication between the White
House and home-state senators before a nomination.

It's not an uncommon practice to block the nominees, as several
of President Barack Obama's met the same fate. McConnell's
comments came after Democrats this month used the blue slip to block
two of Trump's nominees to circuit
courts.

On September 5, Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota refused
to sign off on Trump's nomination of Minnesota Supreme Court
Judge David Stras for a vacancy on the 8th US Circuit Court of
Appeals. Franken said he could not support Stras, nominated by
Trump in March, and would not return a blue slip to the Senate
Judiciary Committee.

On Thursday, Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden of Oregon announced
they would block Ryan Bounds, an assistant US attorney in Oregon,
from a seat on the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals. The duo said
in a letter to the White House that they would not provide blue
slips for Bounds because he had not been approved by a bipartisan
judicial selection committee in their state.

The blue-slip denials represent the biggest roadblock for
Trump as he tries to remake the courts: landing Democratic
support for judicial nominees in the 30 states with at least one
senator who caucuses with Democrats. Though his nominees have
received blue slips from Democratic senators in Colorado,
Michigan, and Indiana, Trump has mostly avoided naming
judicial nominees for district and circuit courts from states
represented by at least one Democrat.

While the denial of a blue slip does not prevent a judge from
being approved, Glenn Sugameli, an attorney
who is an expert on judicial nominations, told Business
Insider in an email last week that "no circuit court nominees
have been confirmed over objection of one (or two) home-state
senators — including under Obama."

Roughly 80% of Trump's nearly 50 nominees to these courts have
come from states represented by two senators from his party — a
much higher percentage than that of Obama's nominees from such
states at the same point in his presidency. Just five of Trump's
nominees hail from states with two Democratic senators.